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It's easy for me to avoid feeling overwhelmed by holiday pressures this year: I've moved on to being squeezed by things due 2 months hence. I'm up to my armpits in February Projects.

It is unfailingly true that I feel most like knitting on projects that are not currently available to me. Color problems on the Wisteria sample causing 30-skein redye? Then that's what I want to knit! Too bad I can't for a couple of days. By which time I will be completely over it. Waiting for shipment of new high-contrast yarn for Catkins Cardigan? Can't get the wee beastie outta my head. The minute the yarn comes, I'll be on to something else. What's with that, anyway? So while I wait at the intersection of these two projects for February, I turn my gaze back to the dear old Knot Garden, who you will recall, lacks only this one sleeve. Since all my other knitting is February-centric, I have decided to make a goal of finishing Knot Garden in time for Madrona (Valentine's Day weekend). Could happen: There's only two projects competing with it, and as I said, it's really almost done.

It should have been finished a long time ago (shouldn't everything?), like last April or so. I fell out of love with it around the time my first drop-spindle arrived and distracted me. And by "distracted", I mean that a lot of things fell away from my consciousness when I discovered spinning. Things like the water bill, automobile maintenance, and childrearing. I should probably look in on those things again at some point.

But now that I'm back to the Knot Garden, I have to tell you - this sleeve kinda stinks. Here's why: The only stitch I dislike executing more than 1x1 rib is seed stitch. It physically hurts me to do it, and I seem to have designed a whole garment around it. Nice work, that. Also, being a sleeve, it's getting bigger and slower as I go, which is not conducive to momentum. I usually make a conscious effort to work all my pieces from the widest to the narrowest part, relying on my initial enthusiasm to get me through the fat part of the knitting, and picking up speed (at least emotionally) as I go. But having placed the big wide cable sideways on this sleeve, I didn't look for a way to go from wide to narrow. And of course, if all that isn't bugging me enough, this sleeve is knit flat, and that is just not my cup of tea. All of which is the more galling because the stupid sadistic designer is ME.

But now that I've confronted these issues, Gentle Readers, I hereby decree the knitting train to be pulling out of Snivel Station. There is no crying in knitting, after all, and I really do think I'm equal to a few rows of stoopid seed stitch. Anybody else need an elbow massage after a k1, p1 session, or is it just me?